Not to mention we will have Bush to thank for the destruction of the Alaskan wilderness, the higher healthcare costs after his reduction in pollution standards, and the deficits that will surely be caused by his tremendously flawed tax plan. I really feel sorry for those who voted for Bush and are proud to have done so.

I echo Pilot1113. If a government progam isn't working well, what do you do? Throw more money at it? Of course not- that is the most stupid concept I have ever seen. No, you don't give them more money, you take it away and make them run more efficiently. Once they are efficient, maybe they'll get a bit more money... Its not really a hard concept to grasp.

Just because one holds an affection for aviation doesn't mean that the FAA should be spared from budget cutbacks. They are a wasteful federal bureaucracy, just like their peers. They've done very little towards privitizing and modernizing our ATC system (under your lauded Saint Clinton).

Why don't you give the new administration the benefit of the doubt? Maybe if you looked at the FAA's budget, maybe you'd see wasteful spending that has nothing do with aviation. At what point are you going to say enough is enough?

N766AS:
Great plan: so our freeways aren't perfect, lets' take money away from freeway improvement projects, our schools aren't really that good, let's not give them as much money, the FAA isn't doing all it said it would do, let's cut it's funding. What is their incentive to improve efficiency... nothing. They would just do a worse job than they were doing before. The things is that the people would notice this and demand that more money be given to these projects/programs, to improve efficiency, and then we just start a vicious cycle of cutting funds, increasing funds, cutting funds... etc. Cutting funds isn't an effective way of improving efficiency. The only way to do this is by directly confronting the efficiency issue, not by indirect methods such as cutting funds. Sorry I had to ramble on so, but Bush has just been pushing my hot button lately and I have been needing to take it out on somebody for a while.

I forgot, I could have sworn I was reading an airliner forum but now I am reading a forum here about politics.

Man I had to be tortured enough in November about these stupid chads and crap and who really should be president. I disqualify both of those losers and break up the democrat and republican party and make several small parties just like I would love to see in the airline industry, no huge airlines but several small ones.

Does someone recall a little piece of legislation passed last year called the Wendell H. Ford Aviation Investment and Reform Act, which was supposed to increase investment in airports and aviation infrastructure, and take the Trust Fund off-budget? It provided a budget of $40 billion for the FAA and for airports that was supposed to INCREASE. So why is Bush carrying forward with a decrease proposed by, of all people, Bill Clinton? This is the second instance in which Bush has chosen to follow Clinton's example, to the disappointment of his followers (the Pentagon budget reassessment being the other, ha-ha). All so the lazy brats of his wealthy contributors can get their inheritances tax-free...

PS - You guys need to take your attitudes over to the MSNBC Politics BBS, where they definitely need some sense knocked into them.

>Great plan: so our freeways aren't perfect, lets' take money away from freeway improvement projects, our schools aren't really that good, let's not give them as much money, the FAA isn't doing all it said it would do, let's cut it's funding

Now you're catching on... The Federal government shouldn't even be funding freeway improvements or schools. It should all be locally funded.

But, really, the FAA needs some funding taken away. If you lose funds what will you do? Try to run more efficiently so that you can make the same product for less money? Of course. It works in the private sector EXTREMELY WELL. Why can't it work in the public sector? IT CAN.

Unfortunately the public sector is extremely different than the private sector. People like to think that what works in one will work in the other, but you show me a business that is trillions of dollars in debt and collects taxes and I'll agree with you.

It doesn't matter how revenue is acquired in this instance. That is totally irrelevant.
What is relevant is that if you take money away from a program (whether it be the Federal ATC program or the Boeing Phantom Works program), the program MUST make itself much more efficient in order to provide the same, quality product. I don't know how you could argue that point.

Shame on the FAA once again for not updating the ATC especially at LGA. I've met with ATC at ORD, JFK, LGA, EWR and Tracon as well as ATC in ORD and they absolutely loath the FAA. Now they don't belive them after the promised changes 10 years ago. But nothing happned. Amtrak runs on a smaller budget yet it was able to strengthen tracks from Boston-New York City through Philidelphia to Washington DC for their high speed train called the Acella which speed to more than 180 mph with plans to eventually expand to Chicago once they get more money and NASA is almost done with the Internatioanl Space Station on a silimar sized budget yet they were able to get the job done. Some politicans on the hill actually demand the FAA to be abolished and privitized like in Europe or partially privitized. I hope that their budget is reduced and that the NTSB has more power. This will teach the FAA to waste $2 Billion and do little to ease the delays and stall on the ATC upgrade

N766AS - Your argument is hilarious. And typical. Who's to say if you take money away from a program it won't just give you a shittier product? By your logic if you didn't give the FAA any money at all, it would be a pillar of efficiency. The laughs never cease with you.

Actually, it is your argument that is frankly hideous. "By your logic if you didn't give the FAA any money at all, it would be a pillar of efficiency." I didn't say that, now did I. And you know exactly what I mean...cut back their budget and make them run more efficient. It happens all of the time in both the private and public sectors, but leave it to a liberal to say that throwing money at a problem will make it go away. You just don't think things through, do you?

Raddog...being a college student it seems that you would be able to understand this principle.... When money gets tight, as it often does in college...what do you do? Live and do things more effieciently and smarter than you ever thought possible. It is unreal how far i can stretch 5 bucks now. The same principle applies with large organizations prone to unefficiently throwing away large amounts of money. Look at what NASA did with that cool little Martian Rover a few years back.

Sure, make the FAA be more efficient by giving them less money. Charge me $22 for filing a VFR flight plan because the FAA is desperate for funding. I probably wouldn't file that flight plan. The FAA's number one goal is SAFETY.

It's obvious few of you are pilots. There's a reason why the president of AOPA, Phil Boyer, is fighting to keep funding that was guaranteed by AIR-21. Amtrak has, to my knowledge, never shown a profit in it's history. It's always been subsidized by the federal government. The biggest threat to all of aviation is a privatized ATC. That and higher fuel costs are part of the reason why it costs $150/hour to rent a Cessna 172 in most of Europe. Why is Australia's privatized ATC saying that they may have to stop providing full aid to pilots in distress because of liability? Amtrak can be sued directly, but the FAA can't. In the interest of safety, that's a good thing.

Good for Bush. I wonder how much waste there is at the FAA; since Nasa is building a space station with less of a budget (even with International cooperation). The FAA is probably another pork laden, cronyism factory and patronage mill, like many things under crooked idiot Clinton.

If your airline has to be "forced" into providing service and safety by a government body instead of providing these things on its own I wouldn't want to fly it anyway...and I'm, sure your insurer's would like to look into that too. So much for social responsibility.

N766AS -- I think we need to take a closer look at who it is who doesn't think things through. What exactly makes you think the FAA will bother to do anything when its budget gets cut? It's not MANDATED to do anything other than provide bare bones ATC. If it can't modernize the ATC system because it doesn't have the funds, it's no sweat off its back. It's not like in the private sector where it will go out of business if it can't provide quality products. In the FAA's case, if you cut their funding, you'll just get shitty products. I think you need to get it through your head that public and private sectors operate under very different circumstances, and incentives for efficient operation are not the same in both. Clear? And the people throwing money at the FAA aren't liberals -- remember the failed ATC modernization boondoggle of the 80s? Guess who did that one? Your idol Ronald Reagan.

XFSUgimp -- I've graduated from college thanks. But I think your analogy is also mistaken. If my funds go down, I run the risk of going hungry. If the FAA's funds go down, the airways get poor service. So? Not like anyone at the FAA is going to do anything about it. If you want to make the FAA more efficient, fine. But cutting their funding isn't gonna do it.

25 N766AS
: OK- maybe I'm not getting through, Raddog2. I don't want any drastic measures taken at the FAA, for the reasons MD-90 pointed out. We can't take that

26 Pilot1113
: I believe the FAA had no intention of modernizing the ATC system. They're just going to wait until two or more planes occupy the same place at the sam

27 XFSUgimpLB41X
: Half the time when the FAA guy gives me a traffic advisery i can hear the collision warning bells going off in the background...lots of time this is u